How To Make Life Easier When You’re Lacking Motivation

Hey folks! Welcome back. This post is a bit of a message to myself and an explanation to you for why I’ve been seriously slacking on the blogging front.

The truth is, I missed one post back in February and I just couldn’t bring myself to write anymore. I met with one measly little road block and I flat out gave up. I was so busy beating up on myself for missing that one post that I couldn’t produce even one sentence of new content.

As you can tell by the recent hiatus from my blog, I’ve been really lacking motivation recently to reach my biggest goals. My new year’s resolutions have all taken the hard hit of inaction for the past many weeks.

I’ve done an acceptable job of journaling every day. I only missed 1 day in January and 3 days in February, which means I only slacked 7% of the time. However, we’re not even halfway through March and I’ve missed 3 days already.

My social media goal has totally bombed. I recognized the problem during the last week of February and decided to do a complete social media fast for the month of March… but I’ve watched videos nearly every single day. Especially as the week goes on and into the weekend, I watch even more.

A friend was recently confused by my attempts at abstaining from YouTube. “I enjoy it!” he said. “Why would I want to stop?”

The problem is, I’m not enjoying it. And even though I desperately want to, I can’t stop.

I’m not reading very much at all because I’m spending all of my free time glued to a screen. And I’m not blogging. At all.

How Self-Sabotaging Wrecks Motivation

Recently, watching Marie Forleo on YouTube brought me this gem of a video. I suddenly realized that in the midst of my mile-high expectations and to-do lists, I’ve been neglecting an important truth: we literally can’t do it all.

We can’t even try to do it all. When we do, we end up like me—not succeeding anywhere.

I can’t admit this without a little laugh and a shake of my fist at the heavens. Doing everything all at once has literally been my life’s challenge. It’s built into who I am. I juggle everything under the sun, with the inalterable expectation that I will succeed beautifully at all of it. No matter how many times I find myself in this same situation, yet again, I never seem to learn my lesson.

It’s rare that the consequences of this over-zealousness catch up to me, but here they are. I’m in the midst of about ten motivation battles, and I’m losing them all.

Priorities Make Your Life Easier

It’s obvious what skill I’m supposed to learn here: how to prioritize.

However, when I start to focus on just one task, my brain thinks: “You’re just lazy. You’re giving up. You could totally do everything if you just tried harder. You’ve done it before, so you can do it again. Just suck it up and power through.”

Prioritizing is very hard for someone whose every task feels of the utmost importance and the utmost urgency. Eisenhower’s decision matrix has never worked for me for this reason. Every last item ends up in the “YOU MUST DO IT RIGHT NOW OR ELSE” category.

However, what I’m doing isn’t working. Clearly. So at least for the next little while, I need to focus on prioritizing my tasks. Like Marie Forleo says, I need to choose my battle. (And yes, that’s singular.)

I need to care about one thing and one thing only—and I need to feel properly accomplished when I get that thing done each day. No beating myself up for not getting the rest finished.

For the record, I have no idea what that one thing might be. Maybe I’ll choose something new each day.

Here’s my hope: in the act of focusing on only one priority, I’ll actually be free to get other things done and surprise myself at the end of the day. When the pressure’s off, you never know what you’ll be able to accomplish.

My fingers are crossed.

What are some strategies you use to achieve your goals when you lack motivation? How do you manage to prioritize? If you have any tips, I would really appreciate your help in the comments section down below.

Until next time, which I hope will be very soon, thank you for reading.

“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” ― Lou Holtz

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About the Blog

Keeping the Flame is a lifestyle blog that explores self-care, spirituality, nature, music, and the myriad of other interests and dreams of Mandi Sadler, an inspiration seeker in Austin, TX. Thanks for stopping by!